


Strychnine's Cube

by graspthesanity



Series: C. Year Zero [5]
Category: Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets, Nine Inch Nails (Band), The Kills
Genre: F/M, Have fun and be yourself!, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22121407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graspthesanity/pseuds/graspthesanity
Summary: The devil is bored. Settle a deal with a teenager. Get a few laughs on the way. Make him famous. Become jealous.
Relationships: Alexa Chung/Alex Turner (Musician), Miles Kane/Alex Turner, Trent Reznor/Alex Turner, Trent Reznor/Jamie Hince
Series: C. Year Zero [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684438
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue

“One...Two...Threeeee-”

I shake my head. The boys start doing some cheap-looking shots and I give a small nod to the man of it all. They don't sound too bad and I could hook him up for the night, with anything he'd want... I'd even do him my fucking self. I swished my gin and tonic from side to side, bored of the party, but my eyes were on the teenager. There was something queer about him and I knew myself inside out from taking to other demons, even using Freudian methods... which had an awe to them, even if we'd all laugh and keep it hush-hush. Sometimes even thoughts are dangerous to think about to the devil himself. 

I drank some more. 

Jamie, a demon whom I was close with, followed my eyes and the nod of my drink to the teenager who had hopes and dreams, we've fooled more to consider it a regular friendship. I rolled my eyes at his wine choice. 

We'd call each other pussies for the other's choice of drink, an insult so stupid that it became almost a mock between us. His green eyes followed and he mouthed usual twink. I smirked. 

“You're one to say, you fucking nonce.” 

“I taught you that fucking word.” He could say that to me. I allowed him far too much. We both lit cigarettes and kept both eyes fixated. “He's got a girlfriend, Trent.”

Human names for us when we walk on Earth. I watched some girl make out with him and a few people whistled, even Jamie besides me with the longest one. 

“Moron.” I laughed at him, but my eyes were back on the twink. “You're the one dragging young boys to Hell anyway after you're done destroying their hole. Then you fucking take photos of barely gaping holes, you faggot.”

“Oh, I'm sorry... are we using all swearwords in the vocabulary, Trent?”

“Yes, we fucking are, James! Piss off! Let me think.” I said and gulped the drink down. Jamie shook his head and before he could say any word, I twisted my wrist slightly, whispered a few words in Latin, the lighters around the teenager stopped working and I grinned, heading outside. I smoked two cigarettes in a row, playing with the lighter by throwing it up and down and when it struck midnight on my watch, just for the show, I started walking outside to a roundabout and I heard footsteps behind me, nearly out of breath. I turned around. 

“Sorry, mate, you got a light?” I lit my third cigarette. Even I didn't know if God existed anymore. Maybe he stopped caring and made aliens and shit. Threw this creation down the drain for me to fuck and mess with. 

“Mate.” My American accent was horrific in these lands. “Ain't there another light in the house?” 

He started rubbing his shoulders for warmth, it was a chilly night and I was around. It was past midnight, the blinds had closed for the lost heavens. I grinned at him. 

“You're recording tomorrow, right?” I asked, as he approached me to the middle of the heightened roundabout. He had many paths to choose and I loved theatre. He nodded, taking the light from me and we both blew smoke away. 

“Aye.” He shivered. 

“Good. Best of luck... Consider it on the house... With just a tip to ask.” 

“Excuse me?” The said twink with short hair was lost as a puppy on the road, not knowing where home and his mother was, sniffing everyone and being happy to everyone who stretched his hand towards him. But this puppy had his paw hurt, so he hesitated. I stepped closer. I blew smoke gently in his face and he closed his eyes slowly. 

“What's the tip?” He asked. Shivering and shivering, the poor puppy. Jamie probably ordering a whole bottle of wine now and sipping it from its neck. I grinned, showing off my white teeth, as if in a B-rated Halloween movie. 

“Oh, now. You need a lawyer for that. Neither of us are.” Lips so close and I was hard. “Call it a Devil's deal. You'll have fame. 

Money.

A girl. 

Until you won't.

A voice so golden... that it will be taken away eventually...” I started walking backwards towards the forest. He stood there confused. 

“Did you just shoot up or something?” The twink asked. 

I turned around. 

“Alright.” He threw his hands up, scratching his left arm. Feeling sleepy. He collapsed and I went into the woods, Jamie running out of the pub with two bottles of wine, screaming for me to wait. The rest of the pub came running out to find the musician passed out, cigarette no longer burning in his hand, instead some demo tape, he had recorded earlier... with a Devil's help now.


	2. I

Every moment we live in, once it registers becomes the past, which I can easily twist, manipulate and break, like the recording demos I had given the teenager called Alex. It was a generic name. As if I had decided to call a child so, thinking it would give him infinite power. So technically we are never in the present and the future is always one registration away, maybe the thought is the closet we would ever get. 

Maybe present was where God was, locked himself away in the barrier of immortality, the moment to never touch the rest?

Jamie, the demon, was alarmed, while chugging on one of the two bottles of wine. Everyone seemed quiet as we went down the stairs, Hell was a basement I had made. I'd change the interior as much as I wanted, but it was vast with people who had to be there just because, I wouldn't even glance at some, some bored me and some were demons whose company I enjoyed, but it was mostly demons that interested me. Jamie was quiet from my lack of commentary, but left me to it. I laid on the bed and waited for nothing to happen, wondering if the years should pass or if I should let myself known. I kept my door locked. Fuck it. 

I was thinking of him. That's how attraction goes, isn't it? You go downwards a spiral of this parasite called love which manifests the soul. I'm saying this because I know what happens. It's like the belief of circles of hell. Well, there's circles of love too. That's what I was struggling with, watching to make sure the teenager had it well. But he was playing in my mind and dragging me along the circles, lower and lower, as thoughts would go. So I would watch, wondering how he really was, so one late night I knocked on his window sill, he still lived with his parents. Alex was intoxicated and high, looking at me confused that I was sitting on a branch of a what used to be a small tree. He tilted his head to the side, before his eyes went wide. He opened his window. 

“I don't have to invite you in... That's the right thing... right? Shite, shite, shite.” He started rummaging his study table drawers in search of a bible which meant nothing to me. “FUCK! FUCK!” 

“Realized that I'm the devil, kid?” I smirked, rocking on my heels and slowly beginning to walk closer to him on air. Alex found some shit cross, which upon further inspection I realized that was two spoons which he probably ate some pudding with. I looked upon the bed, to see an even skinnier girl than I had imagined. I looked at his room, the posters... The girl seemed out of place. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown some bitch in. 

He held his spoons like a cross, shaking, motioning them towards me even harder, with force, but I only kept walking on air, until I sat on his windowsill from the outside, head turned backwards towards him to admire the... Sheffield. Right. Sheffield night sky. Then, just to scare him a bit, I said my words loud in Latin and my head spun around to watch him. I made a perfect “o” with my mouth, before laughing. I liked doing the cliches. 

Then I opened the window more and put my foot inside. 

Fixed my head. Alex dropped his spoons. His whole body was shaking. The girl stopped breathing and even a question of his mother asking what he was doing stood still in the air now and he slowly turned his head, closing his eyes. 

“When time stops for the first time for you... You get a headache, it's hard to wrap your head around that the Earth along with you...” I gesticulated at him. “Isn't spinning anymore.” 

Before he could say anything. 

I grinned widely. 

“You've invited me before, Alex.” I smiled. 

And I good a long look at him, freezing him in time. So that I wouldn't hear further screeches, I was next to the bed. Looking at girl. My own memories mixing with Alex's, the girl's as well and a third person. I turned behind to see Alex who had been with a guy before, something he had hidden very well and deep inside him. It was like a photograph, like a muse, there are so many photos you can take of one person, like shaking a Polaroid for it to show up on the photo, already of the argument, erasing all of the love and shock of one another. Were girls more durable? Were girls the entire roll for him? 

I knew what people would say. That gay men would never be happy, that they would hop from one bed to another in a quick waltz, fighting time until they would die, as if the twinks would give their own age in exchange for a quick fuck. 

I knew love spells, I could manipulate anyone I pleased. Love was just a heightened condition, but as I approached him again, twisting my wrist slightly and the one Latin word, time stopped freezing for the musician. He held his head, feeling the weight of time stopping. He looked up at me, eyes bloodshot and I didn't approach the poor boy. 

“Please leave...” He asked weakly. 

“You've already agreed, Alex.” He started crying, holding his head. For a slither of time I knew what was going to happen and I could leave it how it should always be, but instead I shrugged and sat down on the floor, watching his posters. 

“I've agreed with the Devil, I've agreed with the Devil... I'm the Robert Johnson of my era...” He whispered, as if scared that time would somehow unfreeze so fast and he was looking at me, his body trembling, as I was playing with my thumbs. 

“I wouldn't go that far, kid. But sure.” I shrugged and he sat next to me, still shivering and eyes looking up, as he tried to say a prayer, but instead he was crying blood. I quickly took a bit on a turn so I could see the stained tears, afraid to touch him, but in the end I just smeared blood on his cheeks. There was nothing holy left in him. 

God had forgotten him. 

So there was me. God didn't even try... With every tear, there was less blood and less prayer. He could collapse and that would be it, but instead I took his hand, one clutching his hair and his tears became white again. My hand giving a small shake. Not even Jesus would forgive his sins now. If Jesus existed, that is. 

Would he be longer than a Polaroid... Would he? Would he? 

I didn't know why they called it even a Devil's threesome, when the greatest sin was to be gay, which I was. Maybe they thought that even halfway was a sin? I don't know. I stepped through his window, the girl should've been shifting to the wall by now. But instead I've stopped time. I wondered... How much would a secret cost this guy's life? His heart was beating heavily, as I ruffled through drunken memories and hazy sex with strangers, fantasies seeping their ways into realities. 

He was hot, he was hot, he was not. 

He started shaking. Reading someone else's memories is like a snake sliding down your throat and you're strapped to a chair, suffocating until the wrong memory may spring up, the one hidden, the biggest regret and upon viewing it, tearing it open like a Christmas wrapper, a cracker, exploding and then the soul is yours. 

And I saw his. 

Just a glimpse... Far away. I was walking on air, watching him lean into this specific guy with a Beatles haircut and they kissed softly, I even looked away. 

He really liked this guy, see and that's when Alex Turner vomited on the floor. Crawled up to me and grinned before his eyes rolled back and then collapsed. 

I put him back in bed, with the girlfriend, Alexa. Now I knew everything. Which strings to pull.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been behind. But I've been pouring my soul slowly into this story, fragment by fragment.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been itching to write some Trent Reznor fanfiction and here it is. The victim, the lover and the duel. All is set. 
> 
> Hope you'll enjoy it!


End file.
